Derek Achong

Se­nior Re­porter

derek.achong@guardian.co.tt

Drugs Sou Sou (DSS) founder Ker­ron Clarke will have to wait less than a year to learn the fate of his law­suit over be­ing dis­missed by the T&T De­fence Force (TTDF) af­ter be­ing slapped with four mon­ey laun­der­ing charges, last year.

De­liv­er­ing a de­ci­sion on Tues­day, High Court Judge Na­dia Kan­ga­loo dis­missed a pre­lim­i­nary ap­pli­ca­tion from the Of­fice of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to strike out Clarke's con­sti­tu­tion­al mo­tion law­suit.

In the law­suit, Clarke is con­tend­ing that his right to a fair hear­ing based on the prin­ci­ples of nat­ur­al jus­tice was in­fringed when he was dis­missed in June, last year. He has al­so tak­en is­sue with the mon­e­tary com­pen­sa­tion he re­ceived up­on his dis­charge.

In the ap­pli­ca­tion, State at­tor­neys con­tend­ed that the law­suit was an abuse of process and sug­gest­ed that he should have pur­sued a ju­di­cial re­view over the ad­min­is­tra­tive ac­tions ap­plied to him.

Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo re­ject­ed claims that Clarke's case main­ly fo­cused on com­pen­sa­tion.

"The ques­tion I have to ask my­self is if, in ex­am­in­ing the re­liefs sought and his ev­i­dence, this is one of those claims that are pure­ly for mil­i­tary law," she said.

She point­ed out that Clarke's case is twofold as he is chal­leng­ing not be­ing al­lowed to make rep­re­sen­ta­tions af­ter he was in­ter­dict­ed by the TTDF as well as his even­tu­al dis­charge.

Dur­ing the hear­ing, Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo set dead­lines for the fil­ing of ev­i­dence and sub­mis­sions in the case.

Pro­vid­ed that the dead­lines are met, Jus­tice Kan­ga­loo is sched­uled to de­liv­er her judg­ment on April 2, next year.

In Sep­tem­ber 2020, of­fi­cers of the Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions Re­sponse Team (SORT) and oth­er di­vi­sions raid­ed DSS's head­quar­ters at Kath­leen Warn­er Dri­ve in La Hor­quet­ta and al­leged­ly seized $22 mil­lion.

The mon­ey was lodged at the La Hor­quet­ta Po­lice Sta­tion but was lat­er re­turned.

Two se­nior po­lice of­fi­cers from Bar­ba­dos were re­cruit­ed to probe the in­ci­dent.

Al­most $6 mil­lion was seized dur­ing sub­se­quent raids on the lo­ca­tion and are cur­rent­ly the sub­ject of for­fei­ture pro­ceed­ings.

Clarke was charged with two of­fences un­der the Pro­ceeds of Crime Act and was grant­ed $300,000 bail.

One of the charges al­leges that be­tween May 2019 and Feb­ru­ary 2021, Clarke, as an un­li­censed money­len­der, re­ceived a tele­vi­sion as col­lat­er­al for a loan, which the re­cip­i­ent was un­able to re­pay.

He is al­so ac­cused of re­ceiv­ing $1,850 in in­ter­est on a loan while run­ning a money­len­der's busi­ness with­out a li­cense. He has de­nied any wrong­do­ing.

In late May, last year, Clarke was ar­rest­ed af­ter ar­riv­ing on a flight at the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port. He was hand­ed over to de­tec­tives of the Fi­nan­cial In­ves­ti­ga­tions Branch, who charged him with four ad­di­tion­al mon­ey laun­der­ing charges.

Clarke filed sep­a­rate le­gal pro­ceed­ings against the Of­fice of the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er over what tran­spired in the raids. That case is sched­uled to come up for a hear­ing on Ju­ly 20.

Clarke was rep­re­sent­ed by Lasana Mur­ray, while San­jiv Sookoo and Na­toya Moore rep­re­sent­ed the State.